^53 
.U77 




Class X.4^SJi. 



Tlie "War of Slavei:',y upon tlie Constitution. 



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*^ A!B DRESS 



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OF 




h o.l 



aT 



LES D. DEAKE, 



ON THE 



ANNIVERSARY OF THE CONSTITUTION. 



Delivered in the City of Saint Louis, SeiDt. 17, 1862. 



Three-quarters of a century ago, that noble i 
body of American statesmen and patriots, over 
which the Father op his Country presided, com- 
pleted the formation of the Constitution of the 
United States, and presented it for adoption by 
the American people, as a form of Government 
and a bond of Union which they believed would 
endure through all future time. It was the first 
written Constitution ever adopted by any na- ' 
tion ; and it has, in the world's judgment, stood, 
frotn that day to this, as the noblest monument 
ever reared by freemen to their.own wisdom and 
patriotism. It has shed upon our country un- 
numbered blessings, and has afforded a light to 
other nations struggling into the exercise of 
self-government. Under its benign sway every 
expectation of its framers for the good of Ameri- 
ca and of humanity has been folly realized ,• and 
there is not a hope that a patriot could cherish 
for his country, which would not be more than 
fulfilled by its continued existence. 

And yet, while there are those still living who 
lived at the day of its formation, the nation for 
which that Constitution was made is precipita- [ 
ted into a terrible struggle for its preservation 
from destruction by its own children ! And it 
is while the land trembles beneath the tread of 
armed legions, and the air is rent with the roar 



of battle for and against the Union it was de- 
signed to cement and perpetuate, that we meet 
to observe as patriots the recurring anniversary 
of tne great step which our fathers took towards 
making the American Nation what it was and 
is yet capable of being, the glory of freedom and 
of the human race. 

Under any other circumstances than such as 
now fill our beloved land with grief and dread, 
it would be a work of love to trace the history 
of our Constitution, and endeavor to setfoi'Ji 
the great principles which pervade its enjaxe 
frame; but how could this be done, with 
the oppressed mind wandering every mo- 
ment to the fiendish assault upon it 
now in progress, and swayed continually by 
alternate hopes and fears, as it follows the shift- 
ing scenes and changing tides of the war which 
is to end in its complete and final vindication or 
its destruction ? It is impossible. The theme 
most prominent under such circumstances is, not 
the origin and principles of the Constitution, but 
the origin and principles of the war now waged 
against it. To that let us then direct our at- 
tention. 

The American people have reached a point 
where an overpowering necessity is laid upon 
them to remove every film from their eyes, and 



"D77 



look with perfectly clear and steady vision at 
what is around aad before them. I have a pro- 
found and painful impression, that notwithstand- 
ing all said and written and seen and heard dur- 
ing tlie last twenty months, there are multitudes 
everywhere, especially in the border slave States, 
who have no correct idea of what this war really 
means, or to what it directly tends. God help 
them, if this continues much longer. 

Light — light upon the motives, aims, and ends 
of the South in the beginning and the prosecu- 
tion of this war, is what the people want. You 
may hurl denouncing generalities at the rebel- 
lion forever, and do little good : the people re- 
quire tangible particulars. You cannot feci a 
starving man on the fumes of a kitchen : he must 
have food, or die. Supernatural eloquence were 
but as fumes, if the public mind be not imbued 
with knowledge of the true character and actual 
intent of Southern treason. The popular heart 
answers truth with mighty throbs : it answers 
nothing else so. It may flutter for a 
while under a transient stimulus, but it 
is the tremor of weakness. Truth alone 
makes it strong. I dare not approach it 
with aught but truth; with that I dare seek 
its innermost recesses. I intend to speak the 
truth now. I will speak it here, in this city, 
face to face with that pestilent element of 
treachery and treason, which, last year, in the 
first months of the rebellion, bore so high a head, 
and which, yet unexpelled, scowls through our 
streets by day, and, in nightly conclave of the 
Knights of the Golden Circle, schemes to build 
an Empire op Slavery over our country's grave ! 

Frequently as I have spoken of Slavery as con- 
nected with this rebellion, it is of that 1 shall 
now speak again. When Cato, ever after his 
visit to Carthage, ended his every speech with 
the well-known words, " Praterea censeo CartJia- 
ginem esse delendam," it was to impress continual- 
ly upon Eome that her only safety was in the de- 
struction of her great rival. When, in address- 
ing the people in this crisis, 1 recur 
again and again to Slavery, it is be- 
cause I believe nothing with a more unbid- 
den and resistless conviction, than that Slavery 
was the one sole cause, and is now the single 
life-principle and the great sustaining power, of 
the rebellion ; and that the safety of the country 
demands that the people know and never forget 
those truths. 

So speaking, I refer not to Slavery as a system 
of domestic labor, nor to any of its ordinary 
moral, social, or economical aspects, nor to the 
wrongs, oppressions, sins, and barbarisms which 
have been laid to its charge. I am on higher 
ground than that. Passing by every other view 
of Slavery, I deal with it now only in its rela- 
tions to the rebellion. It is of Slavery the " pe- 



culiar institution," loved more than country by \ 
the South— of Slavery as the foundation and in- 
strument of aggressive political power— of 
Slavery as the hot-bed of a " social aristocracy," 
alien in spirit to our free institutions— of 
Slavery speaking and acting through its per- 
fidious votaries— of Slavery in its faith- 
less abandonment of all honor, duty, and 
patriotism, for the sake of its own advance- 
ment—of Slavery plotting treason for thirty 
years- of Slavery false to country and therefore 
false to everything— of Slavery the secessionist, 
the rebel, the traitor, the parricide, the filibus- 
ter, the guerilla, the demon of destruction, that 
I speak, and, with God's help, will continue to 
speak ; for I dare not smother down the burning 
convictions forced into my soul by this hell-born 
rebellion. 

My friends, but the other day our country was 
tranquil, prosperous, and united; to-day, it 
writhes and quivers under the deadly blows of 
Slavery, the armed destroyer ; blows causeless, 
and therefore most cruel ; blows struck with all 
the power of unprovoked and savage malignity ; 
blows aimed at the very life of n nation that had 
nourished slavery as a child; Hl.vvs which, if suc- 
cessful, will batter down into a shapeless mass 
of ruins all that makes our country worthy of 
our love, or of the respect of mankind ! It is 
the Samson of Slavery heaving at the pillars of 
the Constitution — the Lucifer of Slavery deso- 
lating the realm it cannot rule! Search the 
world's records and traditions for a parallel, and 
desist in despair ; for never was there a crime 
approaching it in distant and feeble comparison. 
It comprehends every other, and overtops them 
all. American Slavery has made itself the Cain 
of the human race : some time its wail will be 
heard, " Behold, thou hast driven me out this day 
from the face of the earth !" 

Can there be any lingering doubt that Slavery 
is the wanton aggressor in this mortal strife? 
Not for an instant, with him who looks and reads 
and thinks ; not for an instant, with him who is 
open to the truth ; not for an instant, with any 
but those who will not see ; and many such there 
are, with whom all argument and appeal is 
vain. Not to such do I speak ; but to those who 
hearing will heed, and heeding will embrace the 
truth, for its own and their country's sake. Of 
such there are tens of thousands, who love the 
Union with their whole hearts, but do not yet 
distinctly recognize the Union's enemy. They 
know that the Union is assailed, and they give 
their sons and their substance for its defense, 
but still do not fully see what assails it. They 
hear by day, and dream by night, of horrid war 
between opposing hosts, that yesterday were 
brothers, and ought to be brothers to-day, to- 
morrow, and always ; but know not how all this 



came about, or why it should be. Let them clear 
away the mists which beclofud their visiou, and 
see that Slaveiiy, iu the reckless ambition, the 
heartless selfishness, the fierce intolerance, the 
tyrannical will, and the piratical greed of its re- 
morseless aristocracy, must alone bear the igno- 
miny of this unmatched crime forever. 

And yet there are those who deny this, and 
those that ignore it. Of the first class, besides 
the host of Slavery's devotees, and the attendant 
retinue of politicians, greedy for votes and of- 
fice, each and all frowning upon or sneering at 
the idea of Slavery's responsibility in any way 
for our present calamities, I have observed, 
among men of note, so distinguished and vener- 
able a man as Amos Kendall, iu a letter to the 
President of the .United States, denying that 
Slavery was the cause of the rebellion ! 
In the second class are found newspapers, 
which, reserving their lightnings for the Aboli- 
tionists, the Black Eepublicans, and the Eadicals, 
launch promiscuous thunder at the rebellion, 
but betray not the least consciousness that Sla- 
very has anything on earth to do with it; and 
eloquent orators, who enthrall admiring crowds 
with ornate dif course about every element and 
feature of the rebellion, save just that insignifi- 
cant one of Slavery; and a numberless crowd ot 
"weak brethren," instantly aghast at the slight- 
est question of the virgin purity of the "peculiar 
institution;" all opposing, but vainly, the resist- 
ance of a dead silence to that mighty public 
opinion, which marches straight forward to burn 
into the brow of Slavery the eternal brand of the 
traitor and the parricide. Pare I confront such 
odds ? Yes, and a thousand times more ; for 
truth shuns no conflict, fears no foes ; nor, armed 
with truth, do I. That I am so armed, it is now 
my duty to show. In doing so I must needs use 
some facts which I have before used in public. 
No matter; they do not grow old, nor will they 
ever lose their point. 

Tn a commercial Convention of delegates from 
eight Southern States, held at Vicksburg, in May, 
1860, Mr. SpKATT, of South Carolina, in advocat- 
ing resolutions in favorof re-opening the African 
slave-trade, used these words : 

" It might be said that the slave-trade could 
not be legalized within the Union, and that to 
re-establish it the Union would have to be dis- 
solved. Let it be so. The men of the South 

HAVE HIGHER TRUSTS THAN TO PRESERVE THE UnION. " 

There was a day when such words would, even 
in Vicksburg, have called down a storm of indig- 
nation and reproach upon their utterer; but then 
and there they received the direct sanction of the 
body to which they were addressed, by its adop- 
tion of the resolutions referred to; thereby 
proclaiming defiance to the Constitution which 
prohibits that trade. Mr. Spratt was a represen- 



tative there of that "social aristocracy," about 
which, less than a year later, he wrote a letter, 
that is probably the most vivid and truthful expo- 
sition of the spirit and aims of secessioH that 
exists. He spoke the simple, undisguised, and 
most execrable truth, as held by his class, when 
he said, " the men of the 6'i/uth had higher trusts 
thin topreserne the Urdan." He announced him- 
self, in advance, a traitor in heart, as afterwards 
he became one in act. And it was for Slavery, 
and, far worse, for the renewal of that accursed 
traffic, against which the anathemas of civilized 
nations are hurled, that he proclaimed his trea- 
son. He renounced the Constitution of his coun- 
try, and defied the conscience of Christendom, 
for the sake of a return, in this enlightened age 
and land, to that diabolical piracy of human be- 
ings, upon which, more than seventy years be- 
fore, the fathers of this nation had set the seal 
of irrevocalde condemnation. This was one of 
the " higher trusts," which the men of the South 
held to be above the preservation of the Union ! 

If this fact stood alone, it would be the 
enigma of the age ; but it ceases to 
excite our special wonder, when we see 
in it but the natural fruit of nearly 
thirty years' effort to enshrine Slavery in the 
Southern mind, not only as the unfailing spring 
of material prosperity, but as the normal con- 
dition of society, and as a blessing divinely or- 
dained to perpetuation and diffusion, and wor- 
thy to be made "the chief stone in the corner " 
of a republican form of government emanating 
from Americans, in the latter half of the Nine- 
teenth Century ! 

Fifteen years before, "men of the South" had 
declared that they preferred the annexation of 
Texas— a vast domain dedicated to, and desired 
by them for the spread of. Slavery — to the pres- 
ervation of the Union. Five years later, they 
threatened the Union, unless Slavery were al- 
lowed unrestricted access to the Territories. 
Six years nearer the present time, they were 
ready for revolt, if the Republican candidate 
should be elected President. Four years still 
nearer, they did revolt, when another Eepublican 
candidate, through their own design and their 
own intrigue, was elected to that high office. 
Through all these periods of agitation and dan- 
ger, the animating and sole incentive of South- 
ern action was the extension and perpetvution of 
Slavery. Upon this, and for this alone, the idea 
and purpose of a Southern Confederacy were an- 
nounced, not only to the people of the South, but 
in the halls of Congress. Hear some of the ut- 
terances of Southern aristocrats on this point. 

Senator Ivekson, of Georgia, said in the 
Senate : 

" There is but one path of safety for the South ; 
but one mode of preserving her institutien of 



domestic Slavery; and that is a confederacy of 
States having no incongruous and opposiuj; 
elements — a confederacy of ilave /States alone, 
with homogeneous language,- laws, interests, 
and institutions. Under such a confederated 
Republic, with a Constitution which should 
shut out the approach and entrance of all incon- 
gruous and conflicting elements, which should 
protect the institution from clmnge, and Iceep the 
whole nation ever 'bound to its -preservation, hy an 
wncltMngeahle fandamental law, the fifteen slave 
States, with their pmver of expandcn, would 
present to the world the most free, prosperous, 
and hajjpy nation on the face of the wide earth." 

Mr. Brooks, Eepresentative in Congress from 
South Carolina, said : 

"We have the issue upon us now; and how 
are we to meet it? I tell you, from the bottom 
of_my heart, that the only mode which I can 
think available for meeting it is just to tear the 
Constitution of the United States, trample it 
under loot, and form a Sou';hern Confederacy, 
every State of which shall be a slaveholdikg 
State." 

The South Carolina Convention, in December. 
1860, in an address to the people of the slave- 
holding States, urged them to secession in the 
following terms : 

" Citizens of the Slaveholdikg States of the 
United States : Circumstances beyond our con- 
trol have placed us in the van of the great con- 
troversy between the Northern and Southern 
States. We would have preferred that other 
States should have assumed the position we now 
occupy. Independent ourselves, we disclaim 
any desire or design to lead the counsels of the 
other Southern States. Providence has cast our 
l9t together, by extending over us an iden- 
tity of purpose, interests and institu- 
tions. South Carolina desires no destiny- 
separate from yours. To be one of a great slave- 
HOLDiNa Confederacy, stretching its arms over 
a territory larger than any power in Europe 
possesses— with a population four times greater 
than that of the whole United States when they 
achieved their independence of the British eni- 
pire — with productions which make our exis- 
tence more important to the world than that of 
any other people who inhabit it — with common 
institutions to defend and common dangers to 
encounter— we ask your sympathy and confede- 
ration. * * * United together, and we must 
be the most independent, as we are the most im- 
portant, among the nations of the world. United 
together, and we require no other instvument to con- 
quer peace than ovr beneficent productions. United 
together, and we must' be a great, free and pros- 
perous people, whose renown must spread 
throughout the civilized world and pass down, 
we trust, to the remotest ages. We ask you to 
JOIN us IN forming A CONFEDERACY OF SLAVE- 
HOLDING STATES." 

In these three brief specimens you have the 
spirit which impelled the South into disunion. 
A volume of such treasonable and incendiary 
expressions might be compiled ; but these are 
enough for this occasion. They teach too plain- 
ly for any one to doubt, that the glittering price 
of treason was a Confederacy living, moving, 
and having its being in Slavery; where, free 
from " incongruous and conflicting elements," 
the aristocrats of Slavery might mature and exe- 



cute schemes of expansion and conquest, which 
should eclipse those of Cortez and Pizarro^ and! 
start Slavery forward in its anticipated careei;- 
of universal dominion. 

For, my friends, let no man deceive himself 
with the fancy, that a Southern Confederacy- 
meant only a Confederacy of such slave States as- 
could be wrenched from our Union. Men who- 
had fiercely struggled in the Union, through 
long years, for the expansion of Slavery here, 
were not the men to abide its restriction to the 
limits of those States out of the Union. Nor did 
they profess any such intention. Emboldened 
by the near approach of the consummation of 
their wicked machinations, they declared 
that to confine Slavery to that area would 
destroy it, and daringly avowed the fixed 
purpose, at every hazard, to push it jnta 
adjacent regions, belonging to foreign nations in 
amity with the American Government and peo- 
ple. Secession, then, was not the exodus of the 
South from the presence of the Pha- 
raoh of Abolitionism, but the beginuing- 
of a career of buccaneering subjuga- 
tion, in which the pillar of cloud by day and of 
fire by night shoukl lead on and on to the en- 
slavement of contiguous uon-slaveholding uh- 
tions, for the extension, establishment, and per- 
petuation of African Slavery. Listen to some of 
their declarations of this audacious and infernal 
purpose. 

Senator Ivekson said : 

" Jn a confederated government of their own, 
the Southern States would enjoy sources of 
wealth, prosperity, and power, unsurpassed bv 
any nation on earth, ho neutralitii laws wovhl 
restrain ovr adventurovs sfins. Our expanding pol- 
icy would stretch far beyond present limiti^. 
Central America would join her destiny to ours, 
and so would Cuba, now withheld from us by the 
voics and votes of Abolition enemies." 

Senator Bkown, of Mississippi, said : 

" I want Cuba ; I want Tamaulipas, Potosi, 
and one or two other Mexican States ; and 
I want them all for the same reason-^/'w iA<? 
plantinq and spreadirig of Slavery. And a footing 
in Central America will wonderfully aid us in 
acquiring those other States. Yes ; I want those 
countries for the si-kead of Slavery. I would 
spread the blessings of Slavery, like the religion 
of our Divine Master, to the uttermost ends of 
the earth. * * * Whether we can obtain 
the territory while the Union lasts, I do not 
know; I fear we cannot. But I would make an 
honest eft'ort, and if we failed, I would go out of 
the Union, and try it there." 

Ex-Got. Call, of Florida, said : 

" Slavery cannot be stopped in its career of 
usefulness to the whole world. It cannot be 
confined to its present limits. Dire and uncon- 
trollable necessity will compel the master and 
the slave to cut their way through every harrier 
which may he thrown around it, or perish together in 
the attempt. » * * It may be in the Prov- 
idence of God that the American Union, which 
lias cheered the whole world with its promises, 
like the star which stoodjfor a while over the era- 



die of Bethlehem, may fall and lose its light for- 
ever. It may be in His dispensation of human 
event's, that the great American family shall be 
divided into many nations. But divided or uni- 
ted, the path of destiny must lead the Anglo- 
Saxon race to the mastery of this whole conti- 
nent. And if the whole column should not 
advance, this division of the race will, icHh the 
inditution </ African Slavery, advance from the 
hanl-s of the Rio Gramleto the line under the svn, 
establishing the way-marks of progress, the al- 
tars of the reformed religion, the temples of a 
higher civilization, a purer liberty, and a better 
system of human government." 

And last, but very far from least, hear the 
words of John S. Pkeston, secession Commis- 
sioner from South Carolina, addressed to the 
Virginia Convention, to induce that body to pass 
1 an ordinance of secession : 

' "Virginia will take her place in the front 

ranks. She will be as she has been for one hun- 
dred years, the foremost in the world in the 
cause of liberty. She will stand here with her 
uplifted arm, not only as a barrier, but the 
guiding star to an empire, (stretching jfnmi^ her 
feet to the tropics, finm the Atlantic to the Pacific — 
grander in proportions, stronger in power, 
freer in right, than any which has preceded it; 
which will divide the rule of the Atlantic, be 
felt in the far-heaving waves of the Pacific, and 
will own the Gvlf of Mexico and the Carihhean 
Sea." 

My friends and countrymen, in this exposi- 
tion, out of Southern mouths, of the real spirit, 
scope, and aim of secession, is the undoubted 
and authentic explanation of that memorable an- 
nouncement by Southern leaders, in the winter of 
1860-61, th,at they would not remain in the Union, 
if a sheet of hlanTc -paper were given them, and they 
were allowed to ■write on it their own terms! Those 
infamous conspirators had ulterior objects of un- 
hallowed and base ambition, which they knew 
were unattainable in the Union, and they re- 
solved, without hesitation or remorse, to immo- 
late the Union, because it held them back. Not, 
then, for any wrongs received or feared, 

,f but for the fake of the grand destiny they 
had marked out for themselves and Slavery, 

' '' all arrangement, all compromise, all conciliation, 
all relenting was renounced, that they might, 
over the ruins of the Constitution, carve their 
way with the sword to their dazzling goal. Can 
any one whose judgment is not wholly perverted, 
whose conscience is not thoroughly petrified, 
look upon such a picture, without recoiling as 
from an open view of the bottomless pit ? What 
principle of honor, or morality, or common de- 
cency, vindicates such a scheme of willful and 
measureless wrong ? or rather, what principle 
of honor, morality, decency, religion, or law, is 
not trampled under foot by it ? It smites the 
laws of the country into the dust, it outrages the 
Constitution, it degrades the American 
name, it affronts the public sentiment 
of the world, it violates . all international law, 



it spits upon the Bible, it spurns the teachings 
of Christ, it defies the throne of Eternal Justice ; 
and all in the name of Slavery, and for the com- 
pulsory spread of Slavery over nations, which 
had long ago banished it from their borders, and 
devoted their domains to the inhabitation of 
free men, as they hoped and believed, through- 
out all generations! Had this been foretold thirty 
years ago, every man in the South would, like 
Hazael, have exclaimed, "WJuit! is thy servant a 
dog, that he should do this great thing ?" and yet 
they do it now, not only without compunction or 
shame, but with a claim of right, and with an 
insolent demand to be "let alone" in doing it! 
And more amazing still, it is done in the name 
of "a higher civilization, and a purer liberty ;" 
as if higher civilization and negro bondage were 
inseparable, and Liberty and Slavery had be- 
come synonyms in the vocabulary of this day ! 
And, that the picture may want no height of col- 
oring or depth of shadow, they march to their 
hellish work over the outraged flag of their 
country, and the prostrate bodies of their broth- 
ers, murdered, by scores of thousands, as they 
rally in arms to defend their country against its 
own degenerate and piratical sons ! 

Think you this is all ? Far, very far, from it. 
With their " Slave Eepublic " once estab- 
lished, and extended Southward to " the line 
under the sun," and with the Gulf of Mexico, 
the Caribbean Sea, and the mouth of the Missis- 
sippi under their control, will they rest there ? 
Not for a day, except to gather strength fbr new 
forays for Slavery. " An empire, grander in 
proportions, stronger in power, freer in right 
than any which has preceded it," is the gorge- 
ous prize, and will they not clutch at it ? 
Conquest for Slavery ! is their slogan ; and 
how long will it be until, backed by nations 
bound t© them through their cotton, and sympa- 
thizing with their aristocratic impulses and 
principles, they will turn northward, to subju- 
gate the nation that failed when it might to sub- 
jugate them ? My friends, call not this an idle 
apprehension — a groundless fear. If this gigan- 
tic piracy he not exterminated now, it will, at no dis- 
tant day after estahUshing itself, aim at " the mas- 
tery of this whole continent," and its consequent suh- 
jectitn to the dr/minion of Slavery ! Eemember, 
Slavery is not fighting to repel attack, but for 

EXTENSION AND PERPETUITY : whcrC wlll be itS 

point of repose in the Western hemisphere? Just 
where, like Alexander, it can sit down and weep 
that there is no more to conquer. Say not that 
their aim is impossible. Great as America is, 
she is not equal to such a combination as the 
South might form, and this day expects to form, 
with European nations, through promised com- 
mercial advantages, and congeniality of hatred 
towards those free institutions, whose life de- 



pends upon the fidelity, the bravery, and the 
endurance of her loyal people in this conflict. 
Awake to the terrible consciousness, that the 
success of this rebellion is death to America ! 
Awake to the certainty, that unless a more 
mighty effort than has yet been put forth be 
made, there is danger of its success ! Awake to 
the conviction that the nation must give itself 
up to this conflict, or despair of triumph ! 
Awake to the stern reality, that this destroying 
assault by Slavery upon all that we hold dear 
must be repulsed, and the assailants defeated, 
scattered, subjugated, and, if need be, extermi- 
nated, or we become THE slaves of Slavery ! 

My friends, it is a startling truth, that never 
since Sumter's fall has the nation fully risen to 
the height of the great occasion. Not only has 
it not seen in its true light the damnable spirit 
and purpose of the rebel aristocracy, underlying 
the whole surface of the rebellion, and scorning I 
all patriotic and brotherly appeals, and yet care- 
fully excluded from all their official pronuncia- 
mentos, in order to blind the world to their real 
intent and object; but it has borne a heavy 
weight of long-accustomed deference to Slavery, 
and been restrained by an honest, but as we now 
see. mistaken and unavailing, conservatism, to- 
ward that institution, which exhibits no conser- 
vatism except of itself, and brooks no radical- 
ism but that itself employs to destroy the Union, 
and clear the way for its own lawless domination 
and expansion. And the nation has constantly 
underrated the military strength of the rebel- 
lion, and underestimated the aid atforded it by 
the three millions and a half of slaves that re- 
main at home. We counted them a dead weight 
upon the South in this war ; but they have so far 
proved its most buoyant and most effective sup- 
port. And there has ever lurked through the 
public mind, especially in the border slave 
States, a notion that, some how or other, no one 
could tell how, this frightful conflict would pass 
away with "nobody hurt " much, and with Sla- 
very restored to its old position in "the Union 
as it was." It is impossible to estimate the evil 
which this mischievous idea has wrought, in 
shaping the course of men to propitiate Slavery 
and its votaries. Politicians keep one eye half- 
open for the country, and the other wide 
open for disloyal votes, when they shall 
again be available. Merchants balance 
between loyalty and trade, often holding the for- 
mer at a discount. Lawyers watch for the fees 
of disloyal clients, and doctors for the calls of 
traitorous patients, more than for the honor of 
our flag. Preachers refuse either prayer or ser- 
mon for the Government, lest disloyal ears 
should be ofl'ended. Thousands hang back from 
avowed loyalty, to escape traitors' frowns ; and 
thousands professing loyalty yield a grudging 



and feeble support to the Union in its peril, that 
they may commend themselves to the Union's 
enemies. All this, so disgraceful to the Ameri- 
can character, so degrading to all true man- 
hood, so false to every dictate of patriotism, 
and so injurious to the Government in this mor- 
tal struggle, has proceeded from the cherished 
belief that Slavery is to survive this war, and 
resume its former influence. It is time that this 
belief yield somewhat of its strength. It is time 
that every man should see that the nation will, 
in all human probability, be dtiren, by the inex- 
orable law of self-preservation, tn destroy Slavery. 
In common with hundreds of thousands of loyal 
citizens, I have earnestly hoped that this conflict 
might stop short of that point ; but hope has 
been well-nigh quenched within me by the grow- 
ing conviction, in view of the facts I have laid 
before you, and of the extremity to which the 
South has waged this war, that Slavery or my 
country must perish. When that dread alterna- 
tive shall be fully presented, God forbid that I 
should hesitate for one moment which to choose ! 
My country must live, though Slavery die a thou- 
sand deaths. Tell me not that we war only for 
the Constitution and the Union. I know it well; 
but can they be saved now, and for all coming 
time, and save Slavery, their enemy, too ? If not, 
let Slavery end its days here and now, whatever 
may follow. A war for the mere mauumir,sion of 
negroes— a war to obliterate Slavery as a mere 
domestic institution, the nation would not and 
should not wage ; but against Slavery the rebel 
and traitor in arms I fear it must, if it would 
itself live. I almost despair of the nation's life, 
but by the death of Slavery. Time was, in the 
early period of the rebellion, when its suppres- 
sion or abandonment might have lett Slavery 
unshaken by its own horrible crime; but that 
time is hopelessly past. I see no day of adjust- 
ment, restoration, or conciliation in the future. 
Slavery proclaims that it conciliates only with 
thesword— adjusts only at the cannon's mouth. 
He who expects adjustment except by the un- 
conditional submission of the South, kaows lit- 
tle of the character and temper of the loyal por- 
tion of the nation. He who looks for a restora- 
tion of the territorial integrity of the Union 
otherwise than by subjugating the rebels, from 
I the Potomac to theEio Grande, knows not what 
it is for an aristocracy to risk its all upon such 
a desperate venture as this. The first step m 
secession placed them beyond all hope, but in 
the complete establishment of their slave em- 
pire, 'i hey know this well. They have never 
asked restoration to the Union on any terms, 
and they would not accept it now, were 
it freely and cordially ofl^ered, with 
unrestricted amnesty to all. They hate 
the Union, because it is not "homogeneous;" 



>c 






that is, not all under the sway of Slavery. They 
loathe the "pure democracy" of the North, be- 
cause it is uncongenial to their " social aristoc- 
racy," and because they hold that there "the 
reins of government come from the lieels of so- 
ciety," as they term the free white laborer. Ten 
thousand times they have declared that they 
never will unite with the North again, and it is 
certain that they are in earnest. Away, then, 
with idle talk about conciliation and adjust- 
ment ! £fet the nation brace itself up to fight 
this war through to the perfect and absolute res- 



toration of the authority of the Constitution, or 
give up the contest at once, and resign itself to 
perpetual disgrace. If to accomplish the former 
it is necessary to strike down Slavery, as well 
as its armies, the world will commend the act ; 
and the voice of our own loyal people will burst 
forth in the midst of their mourning for sons 
and brothers dead in battle, with the unhesita- 
ting and firm response, " Let it be so ! The men 

OF THE NOETH HAVE HIOHEB TRUSTS THAN TO PRE- 
SERVE Slavery!" 



